This report contains data from the Ruffalo Noel Levitz satisfaction and priorities surveys, which institutions use to help prioritize institutional changes. In turn, RNL regularly reports the collective findings from across the nation to identify trends in college student satisfaction. Here are some of the findings from this year’s college student satisfaction report.

Students’ calls for improvements—a sampling

Across higher education, students are concerned about their ability to register for the classes they need without conflicts.

At four-year private institutions, students prioritized their concerns about the availability of financial aid and their perception that tuition may not be a worthwhile investment.

Students at four-year public institutions indicated concerns with their perception that faculty may not be fair and unbiased in their treatment of individual students.

At community colleges, students were concerned about academic advisors’ knowledge and the timeliness of faculty feedback.

Students at career and private schools placed a priority on the equipment in the lab facilities being kept up to date.

At a glance: How satisfied are today’s college students?

Overall, college student satisfaction for the following six data sets has remained steady in recent years, with nontraditional learners continuing to reflect higher overall satisfaction scores:

As shown above, the majority of today’s college students are satisfied with their college experiences, but there is room for improvement. To move the needle on student satisfaction, RNL recommends that institutions drill down into the specific survey items measured on the RNL surveys and to intentionally respond to identified challenges.

Do you know how satisfied your students are? I encourage you to assess student satisfaction on your campus regularly, and to compare your students’ perceptions with national data on student satisfaction and priorities for your institution type.

Call 800.876.1117 or email me to learn more about RNL Satisfaction-Priorities Surveys or the 2017 college student satisfaction report. I will be happy to discuss how campuses are using satisfaction data to make positive changes that matter to their students.

More than 400 colleges and universities use the 100-item RNL College Student Inventory to drive their early identification and early intervention strategies so they can increase retention and completion. This proven, early-alert assessment quickly spots trouble—and identifies each student’s strengths—much earlier than most programs that are designed to flag at-risk students and sound off early alerts.

Example—how it works—a first-year named Sarah (not her real name)

With a 3.4 GPA in high school, first-year student Sarah didn’t appear to be at risk, but even before her classes began, Sarah’s advisor and student services team were alerted to a number of her motivational risks immediately following orientation when Sarah completed the RNL College Student Inventory, part of RNL Student Success.

Sarah’s top 3 requests (of 25 possible)
I would like to talk with a counselor about my general attitude toward school.
I would like some training to improve my reading skills.
I would like some help selecting an educational plan that will prepare me to get a good job.

In response, Sarah’s institution took appropriate steps to intervene to keep her on track to graduation.

Learn how to better serve each individual adult learner, traditional-age learner, and other groups

Using 20-minute assessments, your advisors and student services teams will be equipped to:

Move beyond mid-term appraisals and exit interviews.

Understand how to provide better, more individualized service from day one that connects with each incoming learner.

Learn what motivates each individual student and which services they are most receptive to.

This is part one of a two-part post on preparing for diverse college student populations. Read part 2 here.

In my more than 20 years working on college campuses, a common theme of conversations has been “are the students we are enrolling ready for college?” This applies to the full range of students: traditional-aged students coming directly from high school, transfer students, adult learners, law school students…. No matter the type of student, faculty and staff frequently ask “are they ready”?

However, now I’m increasingly concerned about whether institutions themselves are “student ready.” Do we know enough about our students as they enter our institutions, either as freshmen or transfers? Do we understand what they are experiencing as they make numerous transitions in their first and second years of enrollment? And do we have nuanced understandings of our diverse college student populations by race/ethnicity, first-generation, by age, and by gender? What do students have in common? Where are their divergent experiences, pressures, and challenges? How prepared is the institution to meet the needs of entering students where they are now, and how solidly in place are the structures for support on day one? Also, do we know what information would be critical to ensure we are “student ready” on day one?

Asian, Hispanic, and African-American entering students anticipate that they will be more satisfied with the college experience than white entering students. This is important because there is a relationship between satisfaction and retention, graduation, and alumni engagement (see this satisfaction research).

41 percent of non-white entering students report they have the financial resources necessary to finish college compared with 53 percent of white entering students.

Entering students of color are more receptive to assistance from the institution (and are already requesting help as they enter their institutions) in every category than white students: academic assistance, career guidance, personal counseling, social enrichment, and financial guidance.

By first-generation vs. students with college-educated parents:

Incoming first-generation students are much less confident in their ability to grasp scientific ideas and write college-level papers than their peers with college-educated parents.

The first-generation students also report lower levels of family support and financial security than their peers with college-educated parents.

These students are entering college with a greater percentage of them asking for help in improving their writing and math skills than their counterparts (math: 56 percent vs. 46 percent; writing: 55 percent vs. 46 percent).

More women than men agree that reading has broadened their horizons and stimulated their imaginations: 61 percent vs. 48 percent.

And women are entering college with much stronger established study habits: 68 percent of entering women report that they study hard for all of their classes, even those they don’t like, vs. 53 percent of men.

By age:

Adult learners are entering college with stronger intellectual interests and more positive attitudes toward reading.

These students are also reporting stronger study habits than their traditional-age colleagues.

While less inclined to get involved in campus social activities, entering adult learners report greater tolerance for persons with different political and social ideas.

And these students are more receptive to getting academic assistance and career counseling.

Now is the time on most campuses across the country to begin preparing for welcoming new students in the summer and fall. What is driving your decision-making about how to prepare for your newest students? If you’re relying on the traditional (and limited) metrics of high school GPA or transfer student GPA and SAT or ACT, you’re missing significant information that is relevant to student success programs. Having motivational, non-cognitive data available can help you fill in the gaps left by old metrics and ensure that you are “student ready” on Day One.

Sharing student satisfaction data can benefit colleagues from a variety of campus departments.

I was talking with a client recently and she pointed out that many times the data that colleges collect on student satisfaction end up residing in the Institutional Research office. We know that satisfaction data can be critical for accreditation documentation which is often why campuses administer a student satisfaction survey. The satisfaction report becomes one of the many data points that are collected for institutional assessment purposes. Yet all too often, it gets checked off a list of must-do assessments and remains on file, leaving many on campus unaware of the valuable data available to them.

It may be time to make friends with your institutional researcher and ask him or her if you have recent student satisfaction data, like that collected by the Noel-Levitz Student Satisfaction Inventory. Satisfaction data can provide valuable information to a variety of campus offices—and you don’t need to be an expert in statistics to have the data reveal something that will help you to do your job better.

Enrollment Management

If you are responsible for enrollment management on your campus, student satisfaction data can:

Provide you with current student perceptions of your admissions staff and of the financial aid processes, so you can get an idea of where you may need to make improvements;

Show you which enrollment factors were most important to students in their decisions to enroll, helping you to know where you should target key recruitment messages; and

Identify your institutional strengths (areas of high importance and high satisfaction) to feature in your recruitment materials, so you can attract new students by emphasizing key areas that they value.

As enrollments at career schools have skyrocketed, satisfaction assessment can help strengthen the student experience at those campuses.

Career and private schools provide educational opportunities to a growing number of students, often serving diverse populations, including students of color and nontraditional students. In recent years, this higher education sector has been under additional scrutiny by accreditation agencies and the U.S. government. But what do the students enrolled at these colleges think of their experience? What are the priorities on a national level for career school students, and where are the schools meeting or failing to meet these expectations?

The 2012 National Satisfaction and Priorities Report focuses on the career and private school data set from 2012. This year’s study presents the overall satisfaction levels across institutional types, with a special emphasis on the experiences of more than 181,000 students at 315 two-year career and private schools. These career school findings stand out:

Career and private schools were tied with four-year public institutions for having the lowest overall satisfaction scores (54 percent), behind four-year private institutions and community colleges.

When asked, if they had to complete their college careers all over again, would they re-enroll at their current institutions, only 54 percent of career school students said yes, the lowest percentage across the four institution types.

Sixty-three percent of students at career schools indicated that their current institution was their first choice, a key indicator of student satisfaction.

Male students were more satisfied than female students with their overall career school experience; at other institution types, females were consistently more satisfied.

Students were generally satisfied with advising at career schools, but there were mixed perceptions across the demographic subgroups regarding the overall quality of instruction.

Career school students indicated that there is room for improvement in tuition paid being worthwhile and identifying financial resources for their education.

Future employment opportunities were the number-one enrollment factor across the board for career school students, followed closely by the availability of financial aid.

Performance gaps between importance and satisfaction scores declined in four out of five years between 2007-2008 and 2011-2012, with the exception being 2009-2010.

The illustration above highlights findings from the 2012 National Freshman Attitudes Report, recently released by Noel-Levitz. Along with identifying needs for college freshmen as a whole, the report identifies the specific needs of subpopulations, as shown, to assist institutions with identifying and targeting appropriate educational interventions.

I recently received inquiries from two campuses using satisfaction-priorities surveys with their students (one a four-year private institution and the other a four-year public university). They noticed that their first-year students were more satisfied than sophomores, juniors, and seniors. Were these results typical of other institutions, or were their data sets unusual? In fact, it has been my general observation that first-year students often reflect higher satisfaction scores, but I took a closer look at the national data sets to confirm that this was the case.

First observation: Overall satisfaction

There is a summary item on the Student Satisfaction Inventory (SSI) that asks students to rate their overall satisfaction levels. This item shows the bottom-line satisfaction perceptions of students in the national data sets. The question uses a 7-point scale (1-not at all satisfied, 7-very satisfied). When we focus on the response of 6 and 7 (satisfied or very satisfied), we get a better idea of students’ perceptions by class level.

The 2011 Student Retention Practices and Strategies Report indicates that while a large percentage of four-year public, four-year private, and two-year institutions are using satisfaction assessments to make changes to minimize attrition, a smaller percentage of these institutions feel that they are effective with actively using the data.

Click on image to enlarge.

The struggle to effectively utilize the data on campuses is not uncommon. I have worked with institutions that are very diligent about surveying annually or every other year but do not use their assessment data as effectively as they would like. Furthermore, we have found that satisfaction actually may go down if you keep asking how satisfied students are but do nothing to respond to their feedback. “Data on the shelf” (or on your computer) have no power. The power comes when you use data to make improvements.

I have advised institutions of all types that they are more likely to be effective in using their satisfaction assessment results for improvement if they:

Widely communicate the results on campus so everyone knows which areas are of top priority for improvement.

Establish a team responsible for reviewing the data more closely and for taking action with the results.

Conduct focus group sessions to learn more from students about the true meaning behind the numbers in the report.

My colleagues and I at Noel-Levitz are continuously working to assist institutions with using their results for campus improvement. This involves transitioning from simply gathering regular assessment data to a process that gathers student perspectives and uses that data to actively guide decision making and influence perceptions.

Dr. Martha Nelson, associate vice president of academic affairs at Dominican University of California, and Dr. Samuel Hirsch, vice president for student affairs at Community College of Philadelphia, will share how satisfaction assessment has become a systematic activity to document student experiences for their institutions, identify issues for improvement, and identify actions that improve student satisfaction. A key element for both institutions has been the ability to monitor trends over time in order to document increases in student satisfaction as a result of their activities. They have also found the data to be beneficial for their accreditation requirements. The Community College of Philadelphia incorporates their satisfaction scores into their key performance indicators as part of their enrollment management plan. Dominican University produces detailed charts and graphs to report the results to their campus constituencies. Both campuses can cite specific enhancements they have made to their processes and procedures to better serve their students in high priority areas.

If you want to learn how to turn satisfaction data in to action plans that create a stronger student experience, I really encourage you to join me along with Dr. Nelson and Dr. Hirsch on February 23. It’s a free Webinar and you’ll have an opportunity to ask questions. Or feel free to contact me directly to discuss opportunities for your campus.

The accreditation and re-affirmation process is multifaceted and often time consuming for colleges and universities. It can be a stressful time for campus leadership as these responsibilities are added to your regular day-to-day activities. However, it is critical for higher education institutions to stay on top of this process in order to receive the necessary approval from their accrediting bodies.

Student-related data are a key component for self-studies and for the total accreditation process. Accrediting bodies have an expectation that campuses will have reliable, valid data which are captured over time. This is one misstep that colleges sometimes fall into: just conducting surveys for inclusion in a self-study at one point in time, rather than surveying on a recurring, consistent basis. Is this true at your institution?